Different kinds of bilinguals - different kinds of brains

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Different kinds of bilinguals - different kinds of brains Maija Peltola1, 2*, H. Tamminen1, 2, H. Lehtola1, 2, T. Kujala3 and R. Näätänen3, 4, 5 1 Department of Phonetics, University of Turku, Finland 2 Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Turku, Finland 3 Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland 4 Department of Psychology, University of Tartu, Estonia 5 Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, University of Aarhus, Denmark Earlier research on bilingual speech processing has suggested that bilinguals may have two separate linguistic systems, which preattentively respond more strongly to the language used in the immediate vicinity. Also, these two systems seem to have different neural representation areas. However, some studies have indicated contradictory results by showing that bilinguals respond equally to phonological contrasts from both languages and that the representations might also be identical. These discrepancies may be related to the types of bilinguals included in different studies. The aim of this study was to determine how different kinds of bilinguals may differ in their preattentive phonological discrimination. Two groups participated in the experiment: Group 1 consisted of 12 balanced Finnish-Swedish bilinguals, who had acquired both their languages from birth, while the 9 learner bilinguals in Group 2 were advanced Finnish University students of Swedish. Half of the subjects participated first so that only Swedish was used with the Swedish speaking researcher, while the other half was first tested in the Finnish contexts with a Finnish researcher. The stimuli were selected individually for each subject on the basis of an identification experiment which covered the rounded closed vowel continuum from /y/ to /u/. The continuum is divided into two categories in Finnish, but Swedish has the additional fronted /u/ phoneme. We selected a vowel pair, which crossed the phoneme boundary in Finnish, but was within the fronted Swedish /u/. Consequently, it is possible to see whether the same acoustic difference results in different kinds of responses in two types of bilinguals. Our results showed a significant interaction between linguistic context and group. Further analysis revealed a significant effect of the context language in the learner bilinguals while the balanced bilinguals showed no such difference. Thus, the learner group showed a larger response for the same vowel pair, when the context made it relevant, while the same pair elicited a smaller response when it was non-significant in the light of the context language. In contrast, the balanced bilinguals showed no such dissociation, since similar responses were elicited by the same pair irrespective of contexts. This result shows that balanced bilinguals perceive speech sounds automatically from both languages, while learner bilinguals perceive phonemes context-specifically. This suggests that balanced bilinguals might have one intertwined system, which contains the categories of both languages, while learner bilinguals have two separate systems, which can be accessed independently. Conference: MMN 09 Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications, Budapest, Hungary, 4 Apr - 7 Apr, 2009. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster Presentations Citation: Peltola M, Tamminen H, Lehtola H, Kujala T and Näätänen R (2009). Different kinds of bilinguals - different kinds of brains. Conference Abstract: MMN 09 Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.05.150 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 26 Mar 2009; Published Online: 26 Mar 2009. * Correspondence: Maija Peltola, Department of Phonetics, University of Turku, Turku, Finland, maipie@utu.fi Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Maija Peltola H. Tamminen H. Lehtola T. Kujala R. Näätänen Google Maija Peltola H. Tamminen H. Lehtola T. Kujala R. Näätänen Google Scholar Maija Peltola H. Tamminen H. Lehtola T. Kujala R. Näätänen PubMed Maija Peltola H. Tamminen H. Lehtola T. Kujala R. Näätänen Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.